The present invention is concerned with improvements in and relating to apiary devices. More particularly, the present invention relates to improvements relating to bee escape boards.
Bee escape boards serve to provide for migration or movement of bees in a beehive or to the outside thereof in a controlled manner. Usually, bee escape boards serve to permit egress of bees from one chamber or compartment in the beehive to another compartment or chamber, while simultaneously affording prevention of movement of the bees in the reverse direction.
Such bee escape boards are known and have been described in the prior art.
In one prior art proposal, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 945,407 dated Jan. 4, 1910 to Nichols, there is provided a bee trap device making use of a slidingly disposed plate which serves to control a communication passage such that, in one position of the sliding plate, random access and return is provided for the bees between two adjoining chambers or compartments. In a second position of the sliding plate, the migration of bees is restricted to one direction by means of a wire-mesh cone having a central baffle to ensure exit of the bees in vertical direction from an upper compartment to a lower compartment. The use of baffles in the form of plates, either relatively rigid plates, or flexing plates, as also disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,252,437 dated Jan. 8, 1918 to Hodgson and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,108,294 issued Oct. 29, 1963 to Brown, Jr., referred to as Porter bee escapes in the art, is not desirable. Primarily this is not desirable since the baffle plates or resilient escape blades tend to damage the wings of bees, or other critical body parts, since the force, particularly that of resilient plates, needed to be overcome by bees egressing from one compartment of the beehive to another, or to the outside, may lead to potential, often serious, injury of the bees.
Among other methods, the chemical vapours which are offensive to the bees have been used thereby to direct them to another location. Yet another method employs a compressed air blast to evacuate the honey supers, i.e., the compartment serving for the collection of the honey in the beehive.
The prior art devices and methods thus provide for relatively forceful bee evacuation or forced migration and there exists, accordingly, the need to provide an escape board which affords relatively voluntary bee escape or migration.